A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations/Babylonians

by Hannah Adams

BABYLONIANS, or ancient Assyrians. The religion of this great nation has been considered to be involved in much obscurity. It appears, however, that they were great students in the heavens, and blended their religion with astronomy. They worshipped the sun, moon, and stars, particularly Venus. At length their astronomy sunk into astrology, and their learned men became diviners and fortune-tellers, while the multitude, from worshipping the heavenly bodies themselves, became devotees to the idols they had made to represent them. This appears to have been the state of the religion of the Babylonians at the time of Nebuchadnezzar, when the unbounded ambition of that monarch introduced an addition to the established worship of the land by the deification of himself.^[1]

Original footnotes

1. Bellamy's History of Religion, p. 38, 40.